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I don’t even know his name.
“I’m sure they’ll have some Marionettes see what they can find from the body,” says Reid. “If we can figure out who glamoured him, track his recent movements. They won’t take this security breach lightly.”
“He said Auclair won’t be a safe haven for much longer.”
Reid shakes his head. “He’s already attacked here once and was unsuccessful. And I don’t see a point in announcing this as his next target beforehand instead of capitalizing on the element of surprise, but I’ll speak with the king about what you heard.” He extends his hand. “Come on. I’ll take you back so we can get you cleaned up.”
“I don’t need an escort.” I mean for the words to come out light, but there’s an unexpected bite to them.
Reid rocks back on his heels and nods, the earlier familiarity between us rapidly dissipating. Because for a moment, I’d forgotten everything that happened in the past few days, and we wereusagain.
“I’m sorry,” I say after a beat, hating the way he won’t look at me now. He was doing something nice, trying to help. “I—I’m not trying to punish you, Reid. It’s just hard to be around you right now.”
His eyes soften as they meet mine again, and he nods. He steps to the side and lets me pass without another word.
The storage closet is just inside the main corridor beside the grounds. A crowd is still collected around the body, and I keep my head down as I head in the opposite direction toward the living quarters, the blood hardening against my skin.
I squeeze my eyes shut as I slip inside Adrienne’s room and close the door behind me, the moment before he fell playing on repeat, the sound he’d made as he hit the ground…
I scrub at my arms until my skin feels raw, but the blood doesn’t budge.
I should’ve tried to stop him. To help him. Maybe if I’d gotten down there faster, I could’ve saved him. He might not have died on impact. I should’ve done more. Maybe I could have used magic to neutralize whatever order made him jump.
Maybe, maybe, maybe.
This is only the first.
CHAPTERSEVEN
NOW
Over a week passes,but clarity doesn’t follow, and neither does relief. If anything, my muscles are wound tighter, my brain spiraling faster, never resting enough to let me sleep, let mebreathe.Maybe it was foolish to think things would calm down after I escaped the wolf camp. I hadn’t been naïve enough to expect normalcy, but somehow the stress and chaos is even worse here.
More deaths on my hands. My partnership with Reid at risk. My home estate under siege. An out-of-the-blue fiancée who’s looking at me like a small creature she’d like to torture for entertainment. And now I’m parading around in a fake relationship with my ex-boyfriend.
The nights have started to blur together since the tarmac. But maybe that’s the alcohol, or maybe it’s the bloodletting. Either way, I haven’t seen Reid since the night that man killed himself in front of me, and I know it isn’t an accident. I’ve been attending my training sessions with Cam, as King Auclair officially decided was best, which means I haven’t been included in any usual Marionettes duties in the meantime.
Leaving me with nothing but a hell of a lot of time to overthink.
Cam’s nose twitches like he can smell the alcohol on me as I stop a few paces away and sway on my feet.
I can’t decide if him getting assigned to my training was a special, deliberate kind of torture, or if the universe just has a really shitty sense of humor.
He glances at my injured hand. “You couldn’t have at least wrapped that first? I don’t want your blood on me.”
I scowl. “It’s dried.”
“I hope you’re not injuring yourself to get out of our trainings. Because it won’t work.”
“Are we just going to stand here talking all night?”
His gaze drifts somewhere over my head, and his lips press together in a hard line. I don’t have to turn. King Auclair may have agreed to let a few of the wolves stay, but his trust only goes so far. A Marionette—or three—has been trailing Cam’s every move since he got here, though they haven’t admitted as much, always keeping a careful distance.
Maybe they would’ve backed off already if not for the security breach with the glamoured Marionette.
Although I’m pretty convinced whatever made him jump off the tower was no simple glamour. There were so many magical triggers left in his brain that any attempts to gather information from his corpse activated the spells, accelerating the decomposing process of his body until there was nothing left for them to use.
Security camera footage and interviews with everyone who came in contact with him days leading up to his death also proved fruitless.
